A Village of Widows

by

Cindy Kenny-Gilday

The community of Deline, N.W.T.
has a Dene population of 800 people. We are located right on the shore of Sahtu
(Great Bear Lake) about 300 miles north of Yellowknife NT. We are the only tribe
and the only human community on this lake. Sahtu (Great Bear Lake) is the ninth
largest in the world and the fifth largest in Canada. Great Bear Lake is probably
the last fresh water lakes in the world.

The area on the north shore of
Sahtu (Great Bear Lake) has been the site of radium mining from 1934 to 1939,
then a uranium mine from 1943 to 1962 and as a silver mine from 1962 to 1982.
The Dene of Deline, mostly men worked as labourers and as coolies carrying
gunny sacks of radioactive uranium ore and concentrates on the transportation
route. Tons of tailings both radium and uranium mine were dumped directly
into the lake and used as landfill. In 1975 young men from Deline were sent
to work in the tunnels on a Government training program without masks for
radon gas exposure. In 1997 ten young men were sent with two hours of training
to clean up "hot spots" of radioactive soil in Sawmill Bay without shower
facilities. There was no other industrial presence before this Port Radium
mine or any other since their closure to date.

Port Radium was owned and operated
by a crown corporation of Government of Canada. Uranium ore and concentrates
were extracted, milled and sold to the US Government for the Manhattan project.
The US Government tested the explosions in Navada near another First Nations
reservation. They built the atomic bomb which they dropped on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki. All without informing the Dene and all without the consent of the
Dene of Deline, the First Nations whose land, resources and people were used.

Because of the subsistence livelihood
which continues to date, our people the Dene travel extensively on seasonal
and rotational basis around the lake; following their main food source, the
caribou and the fish. Not just the men but families were generally exposed
to the various waste landfills and lake dumps over the years. They were not
warned about the hazardous nature of these ores and tailings, and took no
precaution with respect to working with this toxic substance, their drinking
water or their traditional foods.

It is only recently that the Dene
of Deline were informed of these exposures. They have been advised of "hot
spots" of radioactivity in the Sawmill Bay area, one of the areas for which
they traded other territory in their land claims agreement because of its
subsistence priority use. Bennet fields, spiritual gathering grounds was also
confirmed by the Government of Canada as contaminated. The Dene of Deline
are now living in fear of their land, water, animals and worried for their
own health and survival.

Deline is practically a village
of widows, most of the men who worked as labourers have died of some form
of cancer. The widows, who are traditional women were left to raise their
families with no breadwinners, supporters. They were left to depend on welfare
and other young men for their traditional food source. This village of young
men, are the first generation of men in the history of Dene on this lake,
to grow up without guidance from their grandfathers, fathers and uncles. This
cultural, economic, spiritual, emotional deprivation impact on the community
is a threat to the survival of the one and only tribe on Great Bear Lake.